Over half of the subscribers that left World of Warcraft to play Funcom's rival PC MMO Age of Conan have since returned to World of Warcraft, developer Blizzard has revealed, adding that the return rate from Mythic's Warhammer Online is currently at 46%.

"To date, 68% of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation and 46% of the players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft," Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime explained during a financial conference call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

Last month, Blizzard claimed that "a significant number of people, well over half" had returned to World of Warcraft from Warhammer Online after its September 18 launch. As for Age of Conan, which launched in May, Blizzard previously reported a 40% return rate.

Launched in 2004, World of Warcraft currently has over 11 million subscribers worldwide, with the game's second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, due out next Thursday, November 13.

Mythic's MMO Warhammer Online has surpassed 800,000 subscribers, according to recently released Electronic Arts financial documents. As Eurogamer points out, the number shows an increase of around 50,000 subscribers over the month of October, proving that Warhammer is growing in the face of strong competition. Publisher EA has sold a total of 1.2 million copies of WAR since its release in September.

Direct competitor Blizzard recently announced that World of Warcraft has now ensnared over 11 million subscribers, an increase of 1 million subscribers between this January and October.

Though BioWare only announced its story-driven MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic for PC, studio owner Electronic Arts have revealed that console releases of both Star Wars and EA Mythic's PC-only MMO Warhammer Online are being considered.

"We're definitely looking at the opportunity to bring the MMO experience to console, without question," EA Games president Frank Gibeau informed Eurogamer.

"[Star Wars: The Old Republic and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning are] under consideration," he continued, warning that the company is "not really in a place to commit or announce anything specific with regards to those."

Warhammer Online launched on PC this past September. Developer BioWare and publisher LucasArts have yet to state when Star Wars: The Old Republic will arrive, though the studio has promised that an open beta will precede its release.

Prior to Warhammer Online's recent launch, developer Mythic cut four classes and multiple capital cities out of the PC MMO. Two of those classes will be added back in December, but studio VP Mark Jacobs claims that one may be gone for good.

"One of [the remaining two] we hope to put back in," Jacobs told Eurogamer. "I can't tell you which yet, that's a surprise. We're probably going to be replacing one and putting in another class in its place. But we'll be talking about that in a few months."

With the Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun classes due in a December patch, both the Dwarf Hammerer and Greenskin Choppa are still on the cutting room floor.

"There will still be four going back in, it just won't be necessarily the same four," Jacobs asserted. "We're not going to put it in just so we can go 'see guys, we put it back in.' If it's not great, it doesn't belong in the game."

Two of the classes cut from Warhammer Online prior to the PC MMO's release will be added in a major patch due out this December, developer Mythic has revealed.

Patch 1.1 will bring the Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun classes along with free server transfers for over- and under-populated servers, "major additions to the chat system (item linking and more), as well as continued work on our targeting system," which includes the addition of Main Assist and Target of Target.

The title's RvR play will be revised as well--improved gear drops, increased drop rates, an RvR-influence system and "more incentive to engage in open RvR"--with other tweaks including 14 new quest chains, two new Lairs, more Tome of Knowledge unlocks, and changes to the nearly all of the game's careers.

"Almost every career is going to see some changes and love coming their way," Mythic VP Mark Jacobs explained in the first State of the Game letter. "There are very, very few changes that will be seen as reductions to a career's abilities."

Over half of the World of Warcraft players that left the popular PC MMO for Mythic's recently launched Warhammer Online have since returned to Azeroth, Blizzard claims.

"We've seen a significant number of people, well over half, that cited Warhammer as their reason for leaving--they've already returned." Blizzard COO Paul Sams told GamesIndustry.biz. "It surprises me because Mythic is a very good company and it doesn't surprise me at the same time because it's really hard [to make an MMO]."

"I think Warhammer is best positioned to succeed out of the various products that have come out thus far since World of Warcraft has come out," he explained... Read more

Mythic's Warhammer Online (PC), the MMO that bills itself as the Led Zep to World of Warcraft's Beatles, is still picking up players with publisher EA announcing today that the game has crested the 750,000 mark.

"Thanks to our players, the war between the Realms continues to escalate at an incredible pace," said Mark Jacobs, Mythic Entertainment co-founder, in a press release issued by EA. "The battlefields are alive with three quarters of a million players fighting for the forces of Order and Destruction in truly epic and unparalleled Realm vs. Realm battles!"

The online role-player launched on September 18, meaning that those 750,000 players have arrived in under one month. EA and Mythic previously touted gaining 500,000 subscribers in the game's first week. At that time, EA called it "the fastest-selling new MMO of all time."

Warhammer Online senior designer Josh Drescher has a unique take on the new MMO's inevitable rivalry with the 800-pound gorilla of the genre, Blizzard's World of Warcraft. In an interview with Destructoid, he swears that Mythic isn't looking to "steal" subscribers away from Warcraft:

When we say we're not competing with World of Warcraft we really do mean that. ... World of Warcraft is basically The Beatles, and if you set out to try and be The Beatles, you wind up as The Monkees. So, we really do just try and be a different type of product. We're not trying to beat them, we're not trying to replace them, we're not trying to destroy them, we're trying to be Led Zeppelin.

We're trying to offer you a harder, darker, heavier sort of experience. We're trying to offer you the kind of music you'd listen to down in your basement with your friends, with a black light on and maybe some illicit substances. We are not trying to be the thing that you all slow dance to at your high school prom. If that means we take a couple of players from World of Warcraft, great, but if it means that we get a group of people that have been waiting for an experience like ours then we're just as happy with that.

Since the official launch of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC) on September 18, more than half a million players have registered to play the Mythic-developed massively multiplayer role-playing game, the studio announced today.

According to the company, this makes Warhammer Online "the fastest-selling new MMO of all time," with studio VP Mark Jacobs adding that "the ranks of Order and Destruction are growing at a record-breaking pace for a new MMORPG."

The last high-profile PC MMO release, Funcom's Age of Conan, netted 400K players in the week following its May launch. Funcom later claimed that Conan was "the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft," a record that Mythic appears to be closing in on.

Warhammer Online has only been online for a week, but the team at Mythic Entertainment is already looking past post-launch bug fixes and is planning future expansions for the game.

"We've been looking at an expansion for two months now," said executive producer Jeff Hickman in a Joystiq interview. "I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea when I say that--we got four people out of 250 who have been doing pre-production on an expansion."

Hickman was quick to elaborate on the smallness of the current expansion project for the PC MMO. "It is going to be months, months, before that team expands beyond those four or five people and we actually start going 'balls to the walls' working on an expansion," he explained. The remaining 245 staffers are "mostly dedicated to improving the quality of the game as it stands now," promised the producer.

While Hickman wasn't willing to give dates for the delivery of content, he was able to give an optimistic timeline for the production of that content. "Hopefully within the next month or two, we're going to start ... work[ing] on forward-thinking, cool, content system patches that will give free stuff to the players that they'll love."

Addressing complaints that former Mythic employees were not credited for their work in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the studio has instituted a new policy that will see it maintaining an online database of everyone who contributed to a project.

According to the latest International Game Developers Association newsletter:

The Mythic team is also taking the following steps to address credit policies:

• In-game and manual credits will be reserved for the launch team.
• Mythic will create an online database listing the name and title of everyone who contributed to a project, regardless of current employment status. Additionally, the studio will make best efforts to provide this information for its previous online games

"I applaud Mythic for taking steps to address this issue," stated IGDA chairperson Jen MacLean. "Fair and accurate credits and transparent standards for crediting remain a pervasive problem in the industry."

In addition, Mythic will work alongside the IGDA to "promote fair and... Read more

Following the recent launch of the open beta for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, developer Myhtic Entertainment has revealed exactly when North American pre-order customers will get their promised early access to the live game servers.

Those that pre-ordered the Collector's Edition will be able to start playing on Sunday, September 14. Access for those that pre-ordered the regular edition will follow on Tuesday, September 16.

Unlike the beta that is currently underway, any progression made during the "head start" program will be retained whenthe PC MMO officially launches on September 18,

As promised, developer Mythic Entertainment has launched the open beta for those that pre-order its upcoming fantasy MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC).

After pre-ordering from a participating North American retailer--including Best Buy and GameStop--aspiring participants should receive an open beta code they can register on the game's official account page.

Both level and content restrictions are in place for the beta, as players cannot advance past level 20 or explore an area above Tier 2, and all characters will be wiped in advance of the game's official launch on September 18.

As the September 18 launch of Mythic Entertainment's PC MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning draws near, studio VP Mark Jacobs has commented that the game needs to succeed or else "it's not going to be good for the industry."

"We need to show the world that it's not just Blizzard who can make a great game, and that the audience is absolutely willing to try new things and to play a game other than WoW," Jacobs explained to MTV Multiplayer.

"If we don't succeed with EA behind us, the Warhammer IP behind us, with one of the most experienced teams in the industry, that's not going to be good for the industry."

The executive also noted his previous hope that Funcom's recent PC MMO Age of Conan would have had more of an impact against Blizzard's World of Warcraft (PC).

"At some level I wanted Conan to succeed because for the last few years people have been saying it's all Blizzard and nobody else can do it," Jacobs stated. "'Only Blizzard can get those kind of numbers,' and so far they've been right. But now it's our turn."

With the September 18 launch for Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning now set in stone, publisher and studio owners Electronic Arts today announced the PC MMO has gone gold and entered the manufacturing process.

The MMO has recently become the latest subject in the industry-wide crediting controversy, as past Mythic staff members will not be recognized for their contributions.

In advance of the game's retail release, pre-order customers will gain access to an open beta beginning September 7. Until then, check out the latest CG trailer

Not crediting the entirety of a game's development staff is "disrespectful of the effort of the game developers who worked on the game, and misleads both consumers and game industry peers," according to IGDA chairperson Jen MacLean.

The statement comes in response to word that Mythic will only credit current staff members for its upcoming PC MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, a move that excludes ex-staffers, such as one that worked on the game for three years.

"Everyone who is currently at Mythic who's worked on Warhammer is going to be in the credits," studio VP Mark Jacobs said of the policy. " And that's good enough for me."

While Mythic's policy is the latest example of improper accreditation, the IGDA affirmed that incomplete credits "are not unusual." In a recent IGDA study, 35% of respondents claimed they "don't ever" or "only sometimes" receive a mention in a game's credits.

The current lack of an industry-wide crediting policy and the abundance of accreditation issues was the impetus behind the International Game Developer... Read more

Following complaints that Mythic's upcoming Warhammer Online (PC) will not recognize the contributions of its former staff members, studio general manager Mark Jacobs has stated his belief that crediting the launch team is "good enough."

"If you're part of the team when we launch, you deserve to be in the credits. No question about it. That, in my estimation, is what the credits are for," he explained to MTV Multiplayer. "Everyone who is currently at Mythic who's worked on Warhammer is going to be in the credits. And that's good enough for me."

The issue came up earlier this week when an ex-Mythic employee told Shacknews they were not being credited for their three years of work on Warhammer Online.

They elaborated that uncredited work has been an "ongoing problem in this industry for many years," adding that that "the actual people who do the menial tasks... Read more

Mythic today released another flashy CG trailer based around its PVP-focused MMO Warhammer Online. And though the actual game may look nothing like this, it's still a great piece of work.

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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is planned for a September 18 launch on PC.

EA-owned developer Mythic Entertainment will not be recognizing former staff members that contributed to its upcoming PC MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the studio has confirmed with Shacknews.

"Over the years, we've had hundreds of people work on the game, and we thank everyone who helped us bring our Warhammer passion to life, but only current employees that have continued until the end will be credited in the final game," Mythic VP and general manager Mark Jacobs told Shacknews.

"Accreditation in Warhammer Online recognizes the incredible team that has poured their heart and soul into making WAR an amazing MMORPG experience," he added.

An ex-employee of Mythic, who requested anonymity, described the surprisingly frequent move as "dogging out many, many developers."

"This has been an ongoing problem in this industry for many years," they informed Shacknews, while expressing confidence that their work appears in the final product. "I spent three years on WAR and I, including many other people who spent... Read more

In advance of the game's September 18 launch, publisher Electronic Arts has announced that those who pre-order Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC) from unspecified "select retail participants" will gain access to an open beta on September 7.

EA and developer Mythic Entertainment had previously promised that North American pre-orderers of the Collector's Edition would be granted early open beta access, with participating retailers including Best Buy, GameStop, GameCrazy, Amazon.com, GoGamer.com and EAStore.com.

That pre-order initiative has now been extended to include the standard version of the MMO, with closed beta players receiving open beta access on September 7 as well.

"For three years we have been saying that 'WAR is coming' and the team has been working hard to deliver on this promise," explained Mythic general manager Mark Jacobs. "In just a few weeks, we are going to throw open our doors and invite more players into the game than ever before. They will have a chance to delve into the open beta and see for themselves that WAR has arrived and it is glorious!"